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Monday, January 20, 2014

With about four weeks to go until we meet our little one, we finally have our nursery just about finished ! It's painted, furniture is put together, shelves are up, most of the decor is up, and the drawers are just about stocked with clothes and diapers. Since we didn't find out the sex, it's fairly gender neutral. I figured I can add some pops of purple if its a girl and leave it how it is if it's a boy. Here's a little picture tour :

The curtains came to me as a revelation. I couldn't, for the life of me, settle on a pair of curtains ! I looked at IKEA, Target, Wal-Mart, and the internet and just couldn't find anything that fit the room. I was thinking of purchasing a fabric from IKEA, but fully making the curtains was a little intimidating for me (I made my bedroom curtains from scratch and I felt like it took me foooorreevverr to make them and vowed I would never do it again). Then, one day as I walked passed the bed sheets aisle in Target, I vaguely remembered reading about using sheets as curtains. Then I quickly Googled it (thank you smart phone) and read that it can be done ! As soon as I turned into the aisle, I found "the one" set of sheets:I purchased a twin set of sheets. This print was PERFECT for the room, and at $15.99 (no, I didn't get that sale price) I couldn't beat the price for turning it into two panels of curtains. Since the nursery is "forest" themed, the leaves pattern was perfect and the teal and green matched exactly to the other teals and greens in the room. This is how I turned the sheets into curtains (sorry for no step-by-step pictures):Step 1: Wash and dry flat sheet.Step 2: Fold flat sheet in half length-wise and iron the sheet (this helps to put a crease right down the middle to make it easy to cut).Step 3: Cut the flat sheet right down the middle - now you have two curtain panels.Step 4: Fold over, pin, and sew the long cut side to make a nice edge. Repeat for other panel. (I did read that some people use hem tape if you don't have a sewing machine)Step 5: Depending on how tall you want your curtains will determine how you do the next part. I just folded the top of the sheet over about five inches and then sewed a horizontal line to make a rod pocket. Step 6: Slide the rod through pocket and hang. Easy !

There are a lot of other great tutorials out there with pictures that can help you as well. The sheets worked perfectly because of the print and color, but also because it was so easy to make. I didn't have to do a lot of measuring or cutting and I only had to sew four straight lines because the other sides and the bottom hem were already done for me.So that's how I got the perfect curtains for the nursery. The rest of the nursery is just a smorsgaboard of framed things, books, and stuffed animals. It's a pretty simple nursery.The pennants on the wall were made out of scrapbook paper that I already had. I used a 12x12 sheet of paper and was able to cut out five triangles per sheet. Then I used a hole punch, punched two holes, and put the twine through. Pretend pressing of Staples "Easy Button."The "Owl Always Love You" print was also made out of scrapbook paper I already had. I found a cute owl picture online, freehand drew it, and cut it out. I used my heart punch for the heart and my Cricut for the words and placed it in an IKEA frame. Done !Lastly, the animal prints above the cube shelf were a bit more time consuming. I've decided on a forest theme pretty quickly and you guessed it...I had these pretty much made the weekend we found out we were expecting. I found these animal prints online for $88 for all four. Even though I loved them, I couldn't bring myself to spend that much. I kept looking at them, hoping I'd change my mind, and then I realized they looked like pieces of paper rather than an actual print. So I thought, "Hey, I can make these !" Over the course of a couple days, I freehand drew, cut out, and taped these little animals together. Each piece is cut out of scrapbook paper and taped with acid free tape to a piece of white 8 X 10 piece of paper. Then I placed a teal piece of paper behind the white to matte the picture. The frames are from, yours truly, IKEA.

And since I don't ever post pictures of myself, here's a little bump picture for ya.

Hope you enjoyed the tour of our upcoming little one's room. Not sure how much DIYing I'll be doing once the babe is born, but hopefully once we get into a routine, I'll be doing more fun projects. Spring is around the corner and I'm bound to get a good garden this year and I'm sure Pinterest will inspire some more crafty projects for me to take on as well. What was your inspiration for your little one's nursery?Now you can Do It Yourself Too !~Stephanie

Saturday, January 4, 2014

I haven't been blogging for quite a while due to working one of the biggest DIY projects of our life: a baby ! We are due in February and are extremely excited for our little person to join our family. The beginning of the pregnancy was rough but it has gotten much better. We have been working on the nursery and I'll reveal some photos once it is finished.

But on to the book I made. I know it's a little soon to be teaching our Peanut (yes...we are waiting to find out the gender) his or her colors, but I couldn't pass up making a book like the one on this wonderful blog post I found via Pinterest. I love colors and ROY-G-BIV and thought the idea was the cutest ever to help teach colors. I think it is great that there are different shades of each color to help the kid see differences in the same color. Plus I had some stickers and scrap paper lying around that needed to be used. So when it came time to make the book, I dug up some swatches I had collected that showed off all the colors of the rainbow.

I decided to use a Zutter Bind-It machine that I got for Christmas last year. I've only used it once so far and figured this would be a great project to use it on. If you don't have a binding machine, you could staple it together or punch holes and use binder rings like my "pinspirational" blogger did.

For extra support, I glued each swatch to a piece of white scrapbook paper (there are two swatches per white page - they are back-to-back). Then I rounded out the corners as well. After I did that, I used the binding machine to put all the pages together.

Once it looked like a book, I used a combination of letter stickers and my Cricut machine to label each color page with the corresponding colored word. I also put some matching colored stickers on each page. For the cover page, I used a star-shaped punch and punched out each color, stuck them on the front and used black stickers to say "My Book Of Colors."

Here's the final product:

So you'll notice there is no "indigo" and "violet" magically turned into purple. I can't remember teaching a kid (or learning when I was a child) the color "indigo" or calling the color purple, "violet" (unless, of course, when I learned ROY-G-BIV...or in Spanish class- violeta).I love it ! I can't wait for our little one to learn his or her colors using this homemade book of colors. I'll probably add a few more color stickers to each page - maybe colored shapes or other animals for extra learning. What educational projects have you made for your little ones?Now you can Do It Yourself Too !~Stephanie

About Me

Welcome to Simply DIY2! My husband and I bought our first house in May (2011) and I am happily making changes (sometimes with Kerry's help) to make it into our own. I'll be sharing my experiences and projects as I go along. Hope you enjoy the blog and can use the ideas as inspiration to do it yourself too!